Chapter 25
The Journal of Daisy D. Stiles - Twelve years ago
I’m so fucking done.
No one be surprised when I pack a bag and leave this godforsaken town and never ever come back.
The art department is sponsoring a class trip to New York City, and I can’t go.
I could, but my mother refuses to sign the permission slip. She says there’s no need for me to go to a rat-filled, crime-ridden city for no good reason. She doesn’t care that this has been my biggest dream for as long as I can remember. She doesn’t care about me at all.
I watched her rip the paper into shreds and then toss it in the dumpster behind the flower shop.
Bitch.
But…
August told me he’d take me someday.
He promised, actually.
And I trust him.
So, one day I’ll go to New York City while holding August Burton’s hand. And we’ll laugh about how shitty things used to be. And then we’ll smile because when the two of us are together, everything’s better.
For the first time in my life, I’m ecstatic to be sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
August is less than thrilled by our current predicament, but he’s doing a fabulous job of keeping his frustrations at bay while horns blast around us, and he slams on his breaks for the sixtieth time in the span of about forty-five minutes to avoid a rear-end collision.
“Are we driving to Jersey?” I ask. August hasn’t told me a single plan he has in store, including where we’re staying.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, focusing on the dozens of cars ahead and behind us in the rearview mirror. But I see the look of disgust cross his face. “I’m not dealing with all of this to stick us in a hotel not in the city. We’re getting the full experience.”
I don’t want to get my hopes up. This is already more than I could have ever asked for.
“So…we’re staying…?” I attempt to pull a solid answer out of him.
August chuckles. “In the heart of it all, Daze. And fucking thankfully, we’re almost there. Sit tight.” He pats my thigh and leaves his hand resting there. I lean into how good it feels to enjoy casual physical affection with someone.
But it’s not just someone. It’s August.
August, who holds me while I sob and has my birthday as his phone’s passcode. August, who I’m ninety-eight percent positive pretended to hate me for a decade but quietly—silently—cheered me on from afar? August, who despite all of the bullshit has remained a constant in my life.
At the next red light, August flicks the blinker on to turn right into a parking garage. We find a spot next to an elevator on the tenth floor, and Gus doesn’t let me touch a single one of our bags as we make our way back down to ground level.
We walk two blocks, with August’s hand in mine in a vice grip so he “doesn’t lose me.
” I don’t know where to look—up, down, everywhere.
I listen to employees shooting the shit while working in a loading bay and a woman yelling into her phone while she passes us looking like Carrie freaking Bradshaw in a fur coat.
I smell boiled peanuts and smile at the man playing the violin on the corner.
Before I have the chance to ask, Gus is pulling a few loose dollars out of his pocket and thrusting them in my free hand to toss in the instrument case propped open for tips.
People weave in and out of the streets, ignoring any signals for stopping or walking. Sounds of construction and continuous traffic fill the air in a way that you just know never silences.
This is it.
The greatest city in the world.
When we turn a corner, I halt, causing August to abruptly stop with me, seeing as he still refuses to let me go.
“Oh,” I breathe.
I blink. I blink again to assure myself I’m not dreaming and everything I’m looking at is real. I’m here.
“Woah,” August echoes my thoughts.
The vision of everything that is Times Square keeps both of us firmly planted in place.
Billboards take up entire skyscrapers. Music pumps through speakers, and people are trying to sell something to every person that passes them.
Whistles, horns, steam from manholes, police sirens, and more drown out my ability to think properly.
We can see the air of our breaths with every exhale, and normally I’m the cold’s number one hater, but right now I don’t care. Right now, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
It’s overwhelming and exhilarating at the same time.
To be one person in a sea of so many is humbling.
I take in the fact that right here, in this moment, I can be anyone. I don’t need to be the closed-off girl with a dark past that’s not worth reliving. Here, August and I never fell apart. We’re just two small fish in the world’s biggest pond.
Gus squeezes my hand, pulling me back to reality. “Sure is something, huh?”
“I don’t…I mean, this is…” Finding words is proving to be difficult. “Gus, I’ve dreamed of this for so long.”
“I know,” he says. “And I know it took me a while to make good on that promise. I’m sorry for that. But, you’re here, Daze.”
“We’re here,” I correct him.
“We’re here,” he echoes, and I can barely hear him over all of the other sounds taking over.
His smile is so easy when he looks down at me, his top lip kept cozy under his neatly trimmed mustache.
He has a navy beanie covering his messy mop of brown hair and a thick brown Carhartt jacket zipped up to his collar.
Gus looks so out of place in the city, and yet at the same time, he looks so perfectly mine.
It’s a possessive feeling I lost long ago, now found and wound tightly back up in my heart.
He tugs me forward. “Come on. Let’s go get checked into the hotel and warmed up before we venture out.”
My feet hurt, and the cold is biting my face in a way I know is going to leave a red burn across the bridge of my nose and cheeks, but I don’t care.
I simply could never muster the energy to care about anything negative when the rest of everything is so fucking perfect.
My body jerks when August suddenly stops on the sidewalk, pulling me back toward him by our linked hands.
“Hold on, I wanna pop in here,” he says, gesturing to the small antique store in front of us.
He’s already carrying my regular tote bag, plus a few shopping bags we’ve picked up along the way of our travels through the city. But hey, what’s one more?
“See something you like?” I ask.
“Something like that.” And when August looks down with crinkles around his eyes as he smiles at me, I have to blink to save myself from free-falling into the feeling of getting lost in him.
But a tiny, nagging voice in the back of my head tells me I already have.
Once we’re inside and faced with rows of shelves that reach up to ceilings, creating a labyrinth of items of the past, Gus informs me he’s finding a bathroom and tells me to check the place out.
I don’t hesitate. I dash down the first aisle, filled with old books and knick-knacks from my childhood and before.
I lose myself in it all, amazed by how each item I pick up feels as though it was chosen with so much care and attention to take up space on the shelf.
This isn’t a store of old junk. It truly is all beautiful treasure.
I don’t know how much time passes, but by the time I find Gus again, he’s chatting it up with the cashier in the back of the store.
Maybe it’s my baseless assumptions of the inner workings of antique stores, but I never would have pictured the guy manning the place to be someone who looks to be our age, maybe a few years older in his mid-thirties.
He pushes large, round, wide-rim glasses up to sit properly on his nose, and he laughs with Gus like they’re old friends.
Obviously I’m biased because I’m lucky enough to climb the giant man next to him like a freaking tree on the daily, but if it was anyone but August standing next to this guy, I’d be very into the Jonathan Bailey thing our new city friend here has going on.
“Okay, you had the right idea popping in here. Ohmygosh,” I exclaim, unceremoniously dumping my finds onto the counter. “Also, hi!” I greet the cashier.
“Daze, I left you alone for like ten minutes. How much damage did you do?” Gus laughs, and I bump into him with a hip check.
“Hey, I’m Carson. Gus here’s told me a lot about you.” The cashier—now known as Carson—reaches his hand across the counter.
I meet him in the middle and shake. There’s no electric spark or pull like there always is with August, but a warm feeling creeps up my arm. A signal only to me that this is a good and safe kind of man.
I side-eye Gus before flashing another smile at Carson.
“Don’t believe anything he says,” I joke. “Do your parents own this place? It’s magical. I could be lost in here for hours, probably even days.”
Carson chuckles and runs his hand through his mahogany colored hair. “My dad’s retired, so now I’m the old man running the show.”
“Damn, that’s cool. How long has this place been in your family? Do you like it? What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen?”
“Hm, uh, okay lemme think,” Carson starts. “My dad opened the store in 1989. He took over the lease when it was a laundromat at the end of its life, and transformed it into Beyond the Closet Door. I grew up here. I love it more than anything. I’d love to tell you the craziest thing I’ve seen but…”
He hesitates for dramatic effect, leaning in just a little bit closer to us. Honestly? I’m captivated by the way Carson talks. He wants to lure you into his tales, like a true and practiced story teller.
“Then I’d have to kill you,” he finishes, clapping his hands together.
“Daze, you about to ask for a job?” August interjects.
“Maybe I am.” I stick my nose up and childishly stick my tongue out.
Carson again laughs us off. I don’t blame him.
We probably look and sound like silly, small-town characters.
He starts ringing up my pile of stuff, and when I look at the total on the screen, I’m shocked by the steep discount Carson very clearly applied.
Gus taps his card on the reader before I can object.
“Consider it a ‘welcome to New York’ gift,” Carson says to me, handing over yet another paper bag to Gus.
“This is, hands down, the best day of my life.” I mean every word.
Carson walks around the counter and embraces Gus in one of those typical man-style half hugs.
Words are exchanged that I can’t make out.
He holds out his hand for mine to shake again, and I really appreciate him not pushing me into further physical contact I never asked for.
Observant, interesting antique store man.
“It was really nice to meet you, Carson,” I say while August wraps his arm around my shoulder to walk us out.
“Can’t imagine it’ll be the last time we meet, darlings!” he calls.
“I liked him,” I tell Gus once we’re back on the cold sidewalk.
“I’m not saying he’s not a cool guy.” Gus pulls me closer into his side and presses his lips to the top of my head. “But I don’t need to hear you gawking over other men.”
“Territorial brute,” I giggle.
“Call me whatever you want,” Gus says.
We continue to fight the bite of early winter to squeeze every moment we can into the day, traveling through the streets of New York. I eat a questionable hot dog. I befriend a pigeon. We try to get tickets to a show, and when we’re unsuccessful, Gus promises we’ll be back.
And for some reason, even though all of this with us is temporary, I believe him.